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4 Legal, Political and Historical Sciences ISBN 978-92-3-103654-5 LEGAL, POLITICAL . 4 LEGAL, POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL SCIENCES C. E. Bosworth, R. N. Frye and Sh. Bira Contents LEGAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES IN THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD AND CENTRAL ASIA IN THE PRE-MONGOL PERIOD .............. 138 The legal sciences .................................... 138 Political science ..................................... 142 ARABIC, PERSIAN AND TURKISH HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD ......................... 147 The pre-Mongol period ................................. 147 The Mongol period ................................... 153 The Timurid period ................................... 155 ARABIC, PERSIAN AND TURKISH HISTORIOGRAPHY IN CENTRAL ASIA . 157 HISTORIOGRAPHY AMONG THE MONGOLS ................... 161 137 ISBN 978-92-3-103654-5 The legal sciences Part One LEGAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES IN THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD AND CENTRAL ASIA IN THE PRE-MONGOL PERIOD (C. E. Bosworth) The legal sciences The development of studies in Islamic tradition, had¯ıth, has been delineated in Chapter Three, Part One, and the oft-quoted observation made that, of the six had¯ıth collections considered as canonical by the Sunnis, four of their authors came from Khurasan (or Tran- soxania) and the other two from adjacent regions of the Iranian world (Abu¯ Daw¯ ud¯ al- Sijistan¯ ¯ı from Sistan and Ibn Maja¯ from Qazvin in northern Iran) (see above, pp. 108–110). The study of had¯ıth began comparatively late in the Iranian East, a key figure here being cAbdallah¯ b. Mubarak¯ (d. 797), who by himself and through his pupils like Abu¯ Yacqub¯ Is’haq,¯ called Ibn Rahawayh¯ (d. 852), did much to spread this discipline as far as Merv and Nishapur. A few preliminary words on had¯ıth are necessary for our purposes from the fact that many of the sections in had¯ıth collections, from the time of Malik¯ b. Anas’(d. 795) Muwatta’ [The Clearly Trodden Way], were essentially organized round legal topics, with their head- ings subsequently taken over directly into early law books, showing that such had¯ıth col- lections were proto-law books.1 Given the florescence of had¯ıth studies in the East after this initial delay, legal studies proper now began to develop there, eventually to be based in particular in the new madrasas (colleges for higher religious and other studies), often founded for a particular, eminent legal scholar and the specific study of his madh’hab (law school). Hence the geographer al-Maqdis¯ı was to observe, at the end of the tenth century, 1 Mottahedeh, 1997, pp. 66–7. 138 ISBN 978-92-3-103654-5 The legal sciences that Khurasan was ‘the region most abundant in learning (cilm, probably referring essen- tially to had¯ıth studies) and law (fiqh)’.2 The two orthodox Sunni law schools which flourished in Khurasan and the East during the first six centuries or so of Islam were the Hanafite and the Shaficite, so completely dom- inant that they are often called in the sources al-far¯ıqan¯ (‘the two sects’) par excellence.3 Hanafism appeared early in Khurasan and had connections with the moderate members of the Murji’ite trend of thought which found expression in the revolt in Khurasan and Transoxania in the early eighth century led by al-Harith¯ b. Surayj (see Volume IV, Part One, Chapters 1 and 2). Hence it was not surprising that Balkh, one of the epicentres of al-Harith’s¯ movement, became an early bastion of eastern Hanafism, with its first Hanafite qad¯ ¯ı (judge) appointed in 759 while Abu¯ Han¯ıfa was himself still alive. The Murji’ite doc- trines taken over by Abu¯ Han¯ıfa had relevance for the legal situation of the numerous recent converts to Islam of Transoxania and the upper Oxus (Amu Darya) lands of Tukharistan, the ancient Bactria. (It is reported that Abu¯ Han¯ıfa held that a Muslim in the land of poly- theism, the dar¯ al-shirk, could be ignorant of the Qur’an and the religious duties laid down in the shar¯ıca yet still be accounted a mu’min, or believer, although this definition of such convert’ legal status did not imply moral laxity; Abu¯ Han¯ıfa held that every effort had to be made to teach such persons the obligations and prescriptions of the Islamic faith.) Hence the appeal of Hanafism there is not surprising, and by the ninth century Transoxania and Tukharistan had become overwhelmingly Hanafite in madh’hab, especially as Arab settlers there were few and the indigenous converts to Islam found attractive the liberal definition of faith by that law school, so that Hanafism took on a populist character as the egalitarian form of Islam of al-sawad¯ al-aczam (‘the great mass of people’).4 In this respect, Hanafism was the antithesis of the Hanbalite law school, whose founder Ibn Hanbal emphasized the permanent superiority of the Arab race as the one which had nurtured the Prophet Muham- mad and the pure, pristine Islam of the first community.5 Shaficism, the law school named after its eponym, the Palestinian Muhammad al-Shafi¯ c¯ı (d. 820), stressed the paramountcy of had¯ıth, and in particular, traditions traceable back to Muhammad, as the foundation of law; hence its followers were often termed the as’hab¯ al-had¯ıth (‘partisans of tradition’), as against the as’hab¯ al-ra’y (‘partisans of speculative opinion’), a title applied (not wholly accurately) to the Hanafites (see further, Chapter 3, Part Two, above). In Khurasan, Shaficism obtained a strong footing and in the early eleventh century, the Shaficites of Nishapur, under the influence of Abu¯ Bakr Ibn Furak¯ 2 Ahsan al-taqas¯ ¯ım, cited in Mottahedeh, 1997, p. 66. 3 Madelung, 1988, p. 26. 4 Ibid., pp. 18–22. 5 Ibid., pp. 22–4. 139 ISBN 978-92-3-103654-5 The legal sciences (d. 1015) and Abu¯ Is’haq¯ al-Isfara’in¯ ¯ı (d. 1027), adopted the Ashcarite system of theology, so that henceforth, the Shaficite madh’hab became predominantly Ashcarite in theology. During the tenth century, the Hanafites and Shaficites were probably roughly balanced in Khurasan. In Transoxania, however, it was only in the middle Syr Darya (Jaxartes) region, in the neighbourhood of Chach and Ilaq, that Shaficism established for itself an enclave, largely because of the teaching and influence of the prominent local Shaficite scholar Abu¯ Bakr Muhammad al-Qaffal¯ (d. 976).6 Elsewhere in Transoxania, Tukharistan and the eastern fringes of Afghanistan, Hanafism was dominant, and it was this dominance which later provided the springboard for the wholesale adoption of Hanafism by the Turks of Central Asia, the Afghans and the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. In Transoxania and Semirechye, the Karakhanids favoured Hanafism, although this did not prevent them at times clashing on social or political issues, if not on theologico-legal ones, with such powerful local lines of Hanafite scholars in the Transoxanian cities as the sudur¯ (eminences, prominent leaders; sing. sadr) of the Burhan¯ family in Bukhara. These sudur¯ preserved their temporal and spiritual authority into the period of domination of Transoxania by the Buddhist Kara Khitay, and a similar influence was carried on through the Mongol period by another Bukharan family, the Mahbub¯ ¯ıs, still notable in local affairs when the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta¯ visited Bukhara in 1333.7 Under the early Ghaznavids, and then under the Seljuqs, both Hanafism and Shaficism flourished in the provincial capital Nishapur, together with the pietistic sect of the Kar- ramites (see on this, above, Chapter 3, Part Two, pp. 124, 142–3). The Ghaznavid sultans and their officials tended to favour the Hanafites. Mahmud¯ of Ghazna’s brother Nasr, gov- ernor of Khurasan, in 1000 founded the Sa¯cidiyya madrasa in Nishapur, while the sul- tan himself often employed members from leading families of Hanafite faq¯ıhs (Islamic legal experts) in Nishapur for diplomatic missions.8 The patronage of the Ghaznavids in their more eastern provinces had its effects on the legal complexion of Islam in eastern Afghanistan and the Indian plain, where Ghaznavid officials and legal scholars brought Hanafism to north and central India to the exclusion of all other madh’habs. This process was continued by the Ghurids, even though Sultan Ghiyath¯ al-D¯ın Muhammad (1163–1203) had personally favoured the Shaficite scholar Fakhr al-D¯ın al-Razi¯ (see above, Chapter 3, Part Two, pp. 129–30);9 the weight of Hanafite penetration proved overwhelming in Muslim India. 6 Madelung, 1988, pp. 28–9. 7 EIr, Vol. 1, 1985, pp. 753–4, ‘Al-e¯ Borhan’¯ (C. E. Bosworth). 8 Bulliet, 1972, pp. 35 et seq.; Bosworth, 1973, pp. 173–8. 9 Bosworth, 1961, pp. 129–30. 140 ISBN 978-92-3-103654-5 The legal sciences For Nishapur, we are particularly informed about the Hanafite and Shaficite lawyers and theologians, and the madrasas founded there and in other Khurasanian towns like Merv and Sarakhs for the notable scholars among them, making eleventh-century Khurasan a pow- erhouse of legal scholarship. Under the Seljuqs, such scholars of Nishapur as the Shaficite Abu¯ Muhammad al-Juwayn¯ı (d. 1047) and his son, the Imam¯ al-Haramayn Abu’l-Macali (d. 1085), passed on their learning to their student, the great al-Ghazal¯ ¯ı (1058–1111). The vizier Nizam¯ al-Mulk (d. 1092) made a strenuous effort to restore the influence of Shaficism in Nishapur through his appointment of Shaficite judges, preachers and so on, and above all, his foundation of a fresh wave of madrasas, his Nizamiyyas,¯ several of which were in the eastern Iranian lands; one result of this was to prolong the tensions within Nishapur and other cities between the adherents of the two madh’habs, often resulting in rioting and violence.10 It has been noted in more than one place in the present volume that, from 1200 onwards, the springs of original thought and learning tended to dry up in the eastern Islamic lands, as elsewhere, with a resultant rigidification of knowledge, and legal scholarship was not exempt from this process.
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